Rosemary's ham

How many recipes, I wonder, are said to come from the author's grandmother? Hundreds of thousands, perhaps. One pictures a white-haired old lady stirring a bowl of cake mixture, following a secret recipe which, perhaps came from her own grandmother. My first memory of home-cooked ham came from my grandmother. She would spike it with cloves, boil it and smother it in some unknown brown spice, and we would eat it over several days, accompanied by salad: lettuce, washed and dried in a salad spinner; hard-boiled egg, sliced in an egg slicer; cucumber with the peel chopped off; tomatoes which were sometimes skinned; beetroot in vinegar; spring onions; sometimes a tiny bowl of potato salad. There was salad cream in those days, although as the seventies turned into the eighties, she gradually switched to mayonnaise. Olive oil was used only rarely, for extra-special salad dressings, made in a vinaigrette and shaken vigorously before each meal. Slices of brown bread. Once upon a time I would have eaten the last ever slice of ham which had been cooked by her, but, like many firsts and lasts, I cannot pinpoint that moment.

Pancakes

"They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide-foam."

One of the most evocative descriptions of pancakes ever, it is that of William Allingham. Thinking a little more closely about the poetry, however, I have to say that I prefer my pancakes not to be crispy. Also the idea of yellow tide-foam sounds faintly repellent. Like yellow snow.

In my opinion, pancakes are not worth ordering in restaurants because in the time it takes to get them from pan to table, their point is lost. The times I have had soggy, sodden, cold disappointing pancakes. In a kitchen straight from the pan and on to the plate in front of the eater. Ideally the person producing them is not overly keen on eating them.

As for fillings, forget, please, about over-elaboration. Lemon and sugar are all that is required. Thus the perfect pancake will have contrasting flavours as well as contrasting textures.

Delia Smith has the best recipe in her Complete Cookery Course.

Japanese food

My mother tells the story of how, staying in a hotel in Japan, she went down to breakfast one morning. The waitress came to her table and asked her politely: "Amelican Bleakfast or Japanese Bleakfast?" Being adventurous when it came to food, my mother immediately decided against "Amelican Bleakfast" and plumped for the latter option.

When recounting the story, she recalls little of what was brought, other than that there was a mound of rice and an egg, still in its shell. It was only when my mother cracked the egg on to the table and its contents spilled out and started to drip on to the floor that she realised the egg was still raw.

I want you to understand that my mother ordinarily had no difficulty with raw food but even this defeated her. I think the next day she opted for Amelican Bleakfast.

Bombay toast

Between finishing school and going to university, I spent four and a half months in India. Many years later, I read a book by William Sutcliffe called “Are you Experienced”. William Sutcliffe was born in the same year as me. His hero, Dave, like me, travelled to India in his gap year. Dave, like me, was about to read English at university. Dave, like me, was going to York University. I assure the reader of “Are you Experienced?” that my experiences were very different to those of “Dave” and that I have never met William Sutcliffe in my life.

“Dave” does not encounter “Bombay Toast” on his travels. I discovered it in about my second week in India, at St George’s Anglo-Indian School and Orphanage, Madras, where I taught for a couple of months. It was Tory, one of the other volunteers at the school, who described it to me when a stack of it arrived at breakfast time: “Bread dipped in a pancakey mixture and then fried”.

The key thing is that it should resemble a pancake, not an omelette. Unlike some versions of French toast, it is definitely sweet, not salty. This version is based on a recipe for “Pain Perdu” by Rachel Khoo. I leave out the fruit compote. The point of this is simplicity.

Ingredients:

1 egg.
100 ml milk.
1 tablespoon sugar.
4 slices of brioche bread (this is closest to the Indian version of Western style sliced bread).
1 tablespoon butter.

Method:

1. Beat together the egg, milk and sugar and pour on to a flat dish.

2. Place the brioche in the mixture and soak for about thirty seconds on each side.

3. Heat the butter in a large frying pan on a medium heat.

4. Add the brioche and cook for 2 to 3 minutes or until golden, then flip the slices over and cook the other side. Eat immediately. Cold Bombay Toast isn’t worth eating.

I discovered that Bombay Toast was readily available in the "Indian coffee houses” dotted around South India and it became my breakfast of choice on my travels. I associate it particularly with a breakfast by a lake in Ooty (official name: Udhagamandalam). There were a number of different versions of Bombay Toast, some, it has to be said, inferior: sometimes too thickly covered in batter; or with insufficient batter and tasting only of the oil in which it had been fried. Worst of all was the version available on Kovalam beach which was smothered with coconut and banana. On another occasion, in Mahabilapuram, I ordered four slices. The proprietor, possibly wilfully misunderstanding me,brought eight slices on the basis that a normal portion consisted of one slice cut into two. In other words, I had eight slices of Bombay Toast to get through.

Bombay is now officially known as Mumbai. "Bombay Toast”, on the other hand, has not been renamed “Mumbai Toast”.